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NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S.
intelligence personnel, journalists, and members of CongressAlternative Press Review
By Wayne Madsen
December 29, 2005

NSA spied on its own employees, other U.S. intelligence personnel, and their
journalist and congressional contacts. WMR has learned that the National
Security Agency (NSA), on the orders of the Bush administration, eavesdropped
on the private conversations and e-mail of its own employees, employees of
other U.S. intelligence agencies -- including the CIA and DIA -- and their
contacts in the media, Congress, and oversight agencies and offices.

The journalist surveillance program, code named "Firstfruits," was part of a
Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) program that was maintained at least
until October 2004 and was authorized by then-DCI Porter Goss. Firstfruits was
authorized as part of a DCI "Countering Denial and Deception" program
responsible to an entity known as the Foreign Denial and Deception Committee
(FDDC). Since the intelligence community's reorganization, the DCI has been
replaced by the Director of National Intelligence headed by John Negroponte and
his deputy, former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden.

Firstfruits was a database that contained both the articles and the
transcripts of telephone and other communications of particular Washington
journalists known to report on sensitive U.S. intelligence activities,
particularly those involving NSA. According to NSA sources, the targeted
journalists included author James Bamford, the New York Times' James Risen, the
Washington Post's Vernon Loeb, the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, the Washington
Times' Bill Gertz, UPI's John C. K. Daly, and this editor [Wayne Madsen], who
has written about NSA for The Village Voice, CAQ, Intelligence Online, and the
Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC).

In addition, beginning in 2001 but before the 9-11 attacks, NSA began to
target anyone in the U.S. intelligence community who was deemed a "disgruntled
employee." According to NSA sources, this surveillance was a violation of
United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18 and the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The surveillance of U.S. intelligence
personnel by other intelligence personnel in the United States and abroad was
conducted without any warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court. The targeted U.S. intelligence agency personnel included those who made
contact with members of the media, including the journalists targeted by
Firstfruits, as well as members of Congress, Inspectors General, and other
oversight agencies. Those discovered to have spoken to journalists and
oversight personnel were subjected to sudden clearance revocation and
termination as "security risks."

In 2001, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rejected a number of
FISA wiretap applications from Michael Resnick, the FBI supervisor in charge of
counter-terrorism surveillance. The court said that some 75 warrant requests
from the FBI were erroneous and that the FBI, under Louis Freeh and Robert
Mueller, had misled the court and misused the FISA law on dozens of occasions.
In a May 17, 2002 opinion, the presiding FISA Judge, Royce C. Lamberth (a Texan
appointed by Ronald Reagan), barred Resnick from ever appearing before the
court again. The ruling, released by Lamberth's successor, Judge Colleen
Kollar-Kotelley, stated in extremely strong terms, "In virtually every
instance, the government's misstatements and omissions in FISA applications and
violations of the Court's orders involved information sharing and unauthorized
disseminations to criminal investigators and prosecutors . . . How these
misrepresentations occurred remains unexplained to the court."

After the Justice Department appealed the FISC decision, the FISA Review
court met for the first time in its history. The three-member review court,
composed of Ralph Guy of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Edward Leavy of
the 9th Circuit, and Laurence Silberman [of the Robb-Silberman Commission on
911 "intelligence failures"] of the D.C. Circuit, overturned the FISC decision
on the Bush administration's wiretap requests.

Based on recent disclosures that the Bush administration has been using the
NSA to conduct illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, it is now becoming
apparent what vexed the FISC to the point that it rejected, in an unprecedented
manner, numerous wiretap requests and sanctioned Resnick.

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Wayne Madsen is a Washington DC-based muckraking journalist and columnist.
He was a communications security analyst with the National Security Agency in
the 1980s, and an intelligence officer in the US Navy. His investigative
reports regularly appear at his website: Wayne Madsen Report